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Ten Years Later…

How can I possibly sum up a decade in one post? I can sure try!

After this wild year of travel and staging at the best restaurants in the Asia Pacific, I couldn’t shake off my life abroad so easily. I ended up going back to Indonesia and working with the first chef I staged with – Will Goldfarb. After one year at Room4Dessert, I stayed in Indonesia to explore and learn about the country’s ingredients and cuisine and founded Asli Food Project ft. Indonesia.

It was a beautiful year or so of exhaustive travel, meeting strangers and learning so much about Indonesia in general. Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to sustain myself financially so I headed back to the United States when I ran out of money to start all over again.

Over the past eight years, I finally worked my way to becoming a pastry chef – the goal I had when I started this whole journey! It was the achievement I had sought since the very beginning, but now…my priorities changed.

Along the way, when I thought about when I was most content with life, it was when I was in Indonesia, traveling to the most rugged parts of the country, using food as my icebreaker and showing those experiences to the world. So that became my new dream.

Now, I’m back at it. But this time, my destinations go beyond Indonesia (though I’ll go back one day!) and I’m capturing every single step of the way for you all to see. It’s definitely a new challenge at 42 years old, but I’m ready for it.

Come check out my adventures on my YouTube Channel @arealcrystal and subscribe! Thanks for following along all these years. I’m excited for the ones to come.

-C

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The Brae Way

One hour after I landed at Melbourne Tullamarine Airport, I arrived in the city only to depart straightaway, from Southern Cross Train Station, and arrived in Birregurra two hours later.

I wheeled my belongings behind me through a shack of a train station to the parking lot—a thin layer of gravel spread over dirt. I surveyed my surroundings and dry farmland spread before me for miles, with all the hay bundles and cows that come with it. I didn’t see people, cars or buildings. I was in the middle of nowhere.

Two guys who alighted the same train as me were chatting with each other and waiting for someone to pick them up. One of them asked, “Are you waiting for Damien [the sous chef]?” “Yes,” I replied. “Yeah, I figured,” he responded. “No one comes out here unless they’re staging at Brae.”

Welcome to the Brae way.

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Scenes of Thailand

Freeze frame from a bus window.
The best part of coconut water: the flesh. Industrially packaged coconut water can’t compete.
Thoughtful social commentary in the form of murals all over Bangkok.
A bit of infrastructure next to a bit of poverty. Welcome to Southeast Asia.
The glittering Grand Palace.
The briefest respite from the glaring sun.
The thousands of gold squares that make up the Golden Chedi of Wat Phra Kaew.
Chao Phyra (river) that runs through Bangkok.
Spires into the sky at Wat Pho.
Sunset at Chatuchak Market.
Ubiquitous street food carts.
Beach time at Koh Samet, a small island off the northeastern coast of Thailand.
Still life in a tropical setting.
Idyllic.
A beautiful bit of coral rock washed up ashore.
A gift from Mother Nature.
Satiated after a grilled seafood feast.
Motorbike fun!
If there’s a sunset, there must be a sunrise.
Pinterest in person. Design ideas.
A spritzer from One Ounce of Onion cafe in Bangkok: dragonfruit, strawberry, lemon, honey and rosemary. Hit the spot perfectly.
Hands down the best food during my trip at Err: Urban Rustic Thai. The menu was curated by Bo & Dylan of Bo:lan. Here: a squid wing salad made like larb gai.
The cocktails at Err were perfect palate counterparts to the spiciness of dinner.
Riding the bus after the King’s birthday celebration next to the palace = sardines in a can.
I found six puppies. Heaven.
Damnoen Saduak floating market, a day trip away to the west of Bangkok.
Everything is sold for tourists: fruits, food, trinkets and clothing.
Cooking on a boat. Maybe a challenge for some, but not this man.
Traffic jam of boats.
Captures perhaps what life may have looked like here years ago.
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Motherland

Taiwan is my “what if” country.

What if my parents had never immigrated to the United States? What if I had been born and raised in Taiwan? What would my life be like? Would I have the same personality, same career, same way of life? These questions re-surface every five years or so, every time I visit and reconnect with family.

But this trip felt different. This time, I wasn’t weighing Taiwan against myself, but I was comparing it to the rest of the world through an alternate lens—its food and dining culture—just like every other country before it.

How did it fare?

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